About Site-76: Prison Anomalies:
This is a cute game with decent dialogue, interesting-enough characters, and bullet hell platforming that feels… alright, but is probably my least favorite part of the game.
One of the first things that stood out to me was the solid voice acting. This is hard to get right in a student project, and Elliott and the other folks he had voice act did a great job here.
The humor is generally good, but I felt like its implementation in gameplay was unnessecarily punishing. Rather than choosing dialogue options based on what I thought a character would be attracted to, it often felt like a crapshoot, and the game telling me a joke at the expensive of pissing off the character unexpectedly. Restarting is easy enough, but having that portion of the game feel like it was up to randomness instead of smart dialogue choices was frustrating.
The bullet hell stuff also got outrageous at times. Even if a lot of my shots were landing, the screen would fill with obstacles much faster than I could shoot. Getting the first couple of permanent abilities is a real struggle, but then, if you have a good build, everything after feels too easy. Double jump + glide felt pretty busted… kind of fun, but made dodging so easy it didn’t feel nearly as fun.
The game’s twist was also unexpected and great, with one gameplay caveat-
This is a very impressive game for someone just starting in the industry. It has lots of charm and good humor to boast. Who woulda thunk of a bullet-hell dating sim? It’s difficulty is also perfect for beginners just getting into the bullet-hell genre (and perhaps even the dating sim genre).
Positives: Soundtrack is solidly decent and fitting to the gameplay at hand. It serves the game well. Controls are tight and responsive which I’m glad to see wasn’t overlooked. Very polished and hardly ran into big issues, bugs, or glitches. Good way to spend an hour to kill Plot is simple and silly as well as endearing So are the characters ^^^ Please step on me, Annie ”Daddy” dialogue option is an A+ I saw God at the end
Negatives: I don’t know if it comes down to my computer, but character dialogue clips very often and it’s loudness is an issue. Volume control of voice acting, music, and SFX as separate sliders in the options menu would be nice. However, since it’s a small game made by a small team, it can be forgiven. I ended up lowering the volume in my Windows Volume Mixer. The double jump and hover abilities working in conjunction make this game very easy at the beginning of the game. By simply gaining height and hovering above the bullet shooting circles, I was able to dodge maybe 70% of incoming projectiles for most of the levels. The consequences of choosing which perma-ability to get from each character becomes null once you start the re-dating sequence. I would spend a few moments choosing wisely taking in account of my gameplay style, but then
